Maintenance concepts for garden monuments Training and qualification of gardeners and garden-related professions in the field of maintenance of historic gardens and parks

The care of historical garden artworks requires special expertise and sensitive handling of the respective plant. Despite long-standing demands on the part of experts, the care of historic gardens is only insufficiently guaranteed and, for example, not integrated into the training of gardeners.
The association Gartenträume - Historische Parks in Sachsen-Anhalt e.V. therefore carried out a model qualification within an interregional project in cooperation with the Castles and Estates Association Lithuania. Within the framework of the project, the necessary planning instruments are to be improved, actors in care are to be qualified for the special requirements in dealing with garden monuments and decision-makers in politics and administration are to be sensitised for the necessary high care standards and the required, professional quality.

The project was financed from the Operational Programme of the European Social Fund and by the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

The development of the maintenance concepts for the garden monuments Schlosspark Blankenburg, Schlosspark Ballenstedt, Landschaftspark Spiegelsberge Halberstadt and Brühl with Abteigarten Quedlinburg is a sub-project of the overall project.

The sustainable maintenance and safeguarding of the garden monuments of the monument preservation and cultural tourism network "Garden Dreams - Historical Parks in Saxony-Anhalt" and their investments through environmentally conscious, high-quality care is an important sustainable development task for the coming years. The urgently needed training and qualification in the field of "Garden Monument Care" was built up as a model in the district of Harz together with the partners in Lithuania through knowledge transfer and was aimed primarily at employees of municipalities and public agencies that own historic gardens or are responsible for their care and management.

A special feature of the training was the intensive cooperation of the training participants on care concepts to be created. During the training exemplarily for the four different historical gardens in particular the so-called care calendars of the care concepts were compiled by the training participants in form of project work in small groups under guidance of landscape architects. This gave the participants a deep insight into the development and structure of care concepts, resulting in a professional approach to them. Working on the concepts also enabled them to practically apply and consolidate the knowledge they had acquired in theory during the training. The supervising landscape architects processed the results of the project work and developed the professional maintenance concepts, which are now available as a model for other historic gardens as a basis for work.

The results were discussed at a workshop in Lithuania with the cooperation partners, presented at an international conference at the end of the project with the participation of the partner regions Centre and Mazovia and documented in the handout on "Maintenance of historic gardens and parks" by the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt.